France-England match hardly worthy of the Euros

The first game of a tournament is always the hardest for every team, especially for the favourites. That’s how the 1-1 draw between Spain and Italy came about. As usual we saw two teams playing neat combination football without threatening the goal very much.

As long ago as 1954 the German coach Sepp Herberger said: “If you don’t shoot you can’t win.” At the end of that tournament Germany were world champions.

It was thanks to the Italians in the end that it was an entertaining game after the Azzurri managed to shake off all the pre-tournament upheavals caused by the match-fixing investigation back home. Unusually for Italy they had two main strikers in Mario Balotelli and Antonio Cassano. They seem to be playing with amazing freedom under coach Cesare Prandelli.

Nothing is worse than losing a first game in this quality-packed Euros, as happened to the Dutch in their 1-0 defeat to Denmark. They did not have much luck. Robin van Persie, who has scored 37 goals this season for Arsenal, and his teammates had chances enough to put the Dutch in front. Van Persie even managed to slip in what looked the best opportunity for his team, and then Denmark took their first real chance to score.

It reminded me a bit of the Champions League final between Chelsea and Bayern Munich. My team Bayern had enough chances to win, and Chelsea snatched the cup.

In normal circumstances if you lose a first game it’s best to phone up the travel agents to start provisionally planning your journey home. The Dutch now have a final when they play Germany on Wednesday. They have to win, for a draw might not be enough before the last game against Denmark.

Germany also had some luck in beating Portugal 1-0. The Portuguese deserved a draw. I have a lot of respect for their performance, even though Cristiano Ronaldo could not continue his Real Madrid form and was well watched by Germany’s Jerome Boateng.

The way the German team played was fine for a tournament team. Nobody really disappointed although a few such as captain Philipp Lahm and Lukas Podolski on the left flank were only average. If you think that Borussia Dortmund defender Mats Hummels learned his footballing craft at Bayern and Podolski spent three years at the club, you could say there were nine Bayern players in the side plus two from Real Madrid in Mesut Ozil and Sami Khedira. In other words, a team that should be a real unit. Ozil was one of the best for me. He knows how to take the pace off the game and to pick it up again at the right moment.

In the opening game, you could sense the immense pressure on co-hosts Poland before their home fans in Warsaw. It was a wonderfully worked first goal between the Dortmund trio Jakub Blaszczykowski, Lukascz Pisczek and goal-getter Robert Lewandowski. But, after a few missed chances, nervousness seemed to creep in and Greece came close to achieving more than a 1-1 draw. Poland were paralysed by the pressure. The co-hosts did not have to qualify and you could see that two years of friendlies are no substitute for the real thing.

I was really annoyed in this game that Poland keeper Wojciech Szczesny was shown a red card after a harmless foul on Dimitris Salpingidis. The penalty for Greece was justifiable but it is wrong for a team to be penalised twice in this way with both the penalty conceded and a red card for the keeper. I ask myself why I am leading a Fifa task force which has come out against this regulation.

It’s the goalkeeper’s job to prevent goals being scored against them. With the rules as they are now, if I were a keeper I would let the opponent have a free run at goal knowing that if I touched him I could be shown a red card. That’s surely not the point of football. If world governing body Fifa and European football’s organising body Uefa continue to work against each other I will consider whether or not it makes sense to continue working in this task force or whether it might be better to resign my position.

Russia laid down a marker with their 4-1 victory over the Czech Republic. I remember when I coached the German national team and we beat Yugoslavia 4-1 in our first game at the 1990 World Cup. That gave us such a lift that we went on to become world champions. I won’t go as far to say Russia will win this tournament but you could see that coach Dick Advocaat had trained some patterns of play. That the Dutchman can work well with the Russians was shown when he won the 2008 Uefa Cup with Zenit St Petersburg.

Captain Andrey Arshavin really covered the pitch, but with the Russians I am never quite sure whether they can keep up the pace, especially as they are the team with the oldest average age in the tournament. The Czechs often had superiority of numbers in certain situations but were not close enough to their opponents.

I have a lot of respect for former Bayern coach Giovanni Trapattoni, who at 73 years and 85 days was the oldest all-time Euros coach when Ireland took the pitch against Croatia. However, as much as I felt for him after the 3-1 defeat to Croatia, a visit to the travel agents may now well be advisable. I can’t see them beating Spain or Italy, although with Trapattoni anything is possible.

Then we looked forward to France and England, two of the big-name teams maybe taking a risk or two. But what did we see in a 1-1 draw? A friendly game. It was the weakest match of the tournament so far, hardly worthy of a European Championship. Was it the heat? I don’t know, but can only hope that more is shown from these two sides when they play their next game.

At least co-hosts Ukraine managed to have the home fans in raptures with a 2-1 win over Sweden, both goals from their footballing icon Andriy Shevchenko at the age of 35. I enjoyed the game, Sweden also went all-out to win and were immediately into the tournament, opening the scoring with a goal from who else but Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Both teams promise more.